Examples Of Liminality In Bildungsroman

Imagine the life of a nomad, moving around to different place, meeting different people, and having different lifestyles. This is the life of the Walls family. In the book The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, she explains that life as a nomad was never amazing. Her life of moving around and being the same old poor child isn’t what she wanted to be. Throughout her journey, she has been discriminated and stereotyped for her family’s actions, and for the way she looks to the rest of the world. The point of this essay is to tell you that there are obstacles like this outside of the world of fiction. With the school board’s recent sentiments regarding the lack of value that fiction provides, fiction should not remain

Throughout the novel, the readers have the ability to follow along Jeanette’s life story. She deals with her distracted yet present parents. They remind her of the important lessons in life. One of the most important lessons that Jeannette learns is that life will eventually work in the end and if it still isn't working that just means it is not the end

While she is in the hospital, her mother does not stay with her. Instead she visits a few times and gives her oranges, seeming to be disappointed in the fact that it is an illness. At this point in the story, the reader can begin to feel sorry for young Jeanette. She is left all alone in the hospital while her mother is busy helping the church. Jeanette wants to be a missionary, just like in the stories her mom has read to her. In the beginning of the book, it appears that Jeanette’s mother does love her. However, it appears that she only loves her based on if she fulfills her expectations or not.

Her Mother seemed to be more put together than her father at times, even getting a job at one point helping the family out. Though her mother was a hedonist and did not contain the motherly love and sacrifice for her kids, this job helped Jeanette’s future. She helped grade papers which increased her knowledge of the outside world and “...the world was making a little more sense” as she read the papers and projects of her mother’s students (Walls 205). Her parents had such an opposition to the outside world that she hadn’t gotten every aspect of

When isolated from society, loneliness becomes a part of you. In the poems, The Wife’s Lament translated by Ann Stanford and The Seafarer translated by Burton Raffel, are two similar and different poems. The characters in these poems handle their exiles in different ways. The way the two characters reflect from their exile is based off Anglo-Saxon values and beliefs. These poems compare and contrast the exile between men and women.

The human experience of an outcast is illustrated by Jeannette Walls in The Glass Castle by the element of chaos expressed throughout the book, the parents’ refusal to conform to social standards, and the poverty that shaped her childhood.

Parents often say, “Listen to your elders.” This cliché can make some people apathetic, but when looking back, most appreciate the wisdom of their elders. The knowledge imparted to children is crucial for their ability to understand and improve the world. In XIV by Derek Walcott, the speaker uses imagery, metaphor, and other literary devices to convey the storyteller’s significance to his life.

Damon Knight’s “The Country of the Kind” follows a narrator who the audience at first knows little about, who lives in a society that is different from the norm, but is also initially left ambiguous. This sense of the unknown exists up until the narrator stumbles upon a pamphlet which opens up new viewpoints to the reader. The pamphlet serves to create three new perspectives in particular, all of which significantly shift the reader’s understanding of the story. First, it gives the reader a chance to understand the narrator and sympathize with him. Second, it offers a new perspective on society and their overall conception of what defines a utopia. The third and final perspective is that of the people who live within this society, and their interactions with the main characters. These three new perspectives prove to be formative in understanding the main character, his interactions with other characters in the story, and the role of society.

When reading literature we often attempt to use particular threads of thought or lenses of critique to gain entry into the implied historic or legendary nature of literature. To accurately process a tale in the light in which it is presented, we have to consider the text from multiple viewpoints. We must take into consideration intentional and affective fallacies and the socioeconomic circumstances of the presenter/author/narrator. We also have to consider how our personal experience creates bias by placing the elements of the story into the web of relationships that we use to interpret the external world. There also is the need to factor in other external pressures, from societal norms, cultural ideals, and psychological themes, and how

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Many composers often incorporate the element of “the outsider/s” — a person or a group of people who are ostracised by their society due to their race, social status or their appearance — to highlight and put an emphasis on socially excluded characters throughout their texts. The idea of “the outsider/s” helps authors portray common traits and developments within individuals belonging to marginalised groups. This element is utilised and investigated in S.E Hinton’s novel, ‘The Outsiders” (1967) and Kathryn Stockett’s novel, ‘The Help’ (2009). In ‘The Outsiders’ the Greasers are the outcast in their society due to their appearance, however in the text ‘The Help’ , the maids are the outcast due to their social statues and their race. Both composers

During the lectures and readings that we have done on coming of age, I have learned that coming of age is a lot like a milestone in life. It happens when we mature or become more knowledgeable and it can happen no matter what age we are. The story, “Boys and Girls”, by Alice Munro, shows us the perfect example of coming of age and is also a story that left a lasting impression on me because of it feminist aspect of a girl’s life.

The experience of being outsiders is explored by William Shakespeare in ‘Othello’, Emily Bronte in ‘Wuthering Heights’ and Robert Browning in his Dramatic Monologues. Shakespeare explores the theme of alienation through a character considered an outsider by the society in which he lives in. Similarly Emily Bronte explores Heathcliff and the obstacles he faces at Wuthering Heights. Browning’s Dramatic Monologues illustrate the minds of psychotic lovers who are all possessive and delusional. In all the three texts the outsiders are rejected and are to an extent responsible for their own position in the society. While some are

Liminality, or the liminal space, can be an effective literary tool used to represent the disparity between ones perception of themselves and the perceptions of those around them, as well as form one of the truest reflections of an author’s episteme. Defined as “the in-between zone” where a person or object is simultaneously part of two categories as well as neither, liminality is found across a variety of literary texts in one form or another. Katherine Mansfield, of New Zealand and England and described as a “liminar” by Sarah Ailwood (2005), utilises an array of interpretations of liminal space to express the concept through both character and story. Mansfield either directly or indirectly reflects her own experiences as a liminar caught between two worlds in her short stories. ‘Miss Brill,’ and ‘Life of Ma Parker’ both individually and uniquely represent a different interpretation of liminality that reflects the experiences of Mansfield. ‘Miss Brill’ provides a unique and personal take on liminality and internalised emotion and ‘Life of Ma Parker’ represents the experience of identity and perspective, influenced by her opinions of her home country and reception in England. In discussing the preceding texts and providing a detailed comparison of episteme and liminality, it can be shown that the either conscious or subconscious insertion of oneself into a piece of literary fiction through concepts of liminality provides a reflection of the episteme of a given author.

Aside from the books that we have read in conjunction with the class, there is one particular literary work that personally stands out due to its overwhelming theme of excessive dysfunctionality. “The Baudelaires” in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events are an orphan family that seems undeniably prone to disaster. However, it is this very concept that allows the reader to both sympathize with the characters, as well as join them on their many absurd adventures.